The Russian Investigative Committee participated in the investigation of the murder of former judge Aigul Sailybaeva in Germany. Her mutilated body was found in the lake in the summer of 2024. The woman was six months pregnant. The main suspect is the husband and mother-in-law who “terrorized” Aigul for many years. Perhaps, after the massacre, they hid in the capital of the Russian Federation. “Moscow Evening” took a detailed look at this terrible crime.
How Aigul Sailybaeva was killed
A native of Kazakhstan, former judge Aigul Saylybaeva disappeared on June 4, 2024 in the city of Bensheim in Western Germany, where she lived with her husband Alexander Dontsov and mother-in-law Natalya. That morning, the woman took her 3-year-old daughter to daycare and stopped contacting her.
Mr. Aigul Kanat was the first to sound the alarm bell. He called his sister but her mother-in-law picked up the phone. Natalya said that she had to pick up her niece from kindergarten herself because Aigul had gone somewhere and disappeared. The woman thought her daughter-in-law was just “having fun.” The next day, Aigul never returned home, and her brother contacted the Kazakh embassy, where they helped him write a statement to the German police.
– We were worried. This is completely inappropriate for Aigul. She usually responds to messages within five minutes. Our parents talked to her on the phone every day, the last time was on June 3. By June 5, we reported to the police,” Kanat said in an interview with a German publication. Bild.
Kanat soon flew to Germany to join the search for his sister. But Aigul's husband, according to relatives, was in no hurry to help the police and behaved distantly.
12 days after Aigul disappeared, on June 16, 2024, her mutilated body was found in a lake on the outskirts of Bensheim. The murdered woman was wrapped in a plastic bag and half covered her own suitcase. CLEAN TV wrote that Aigul's body was taken to the lake several hours before being discovered. At that time, the woman had been dead for nearly two weeks. An autopsy revealed that Aigul was six months pregnant.
— According to expert reports, she was exposed to acid or chemicals. There was no face at all, no neck, no hair. There were many stab wounds, more than 30,” Aigul's mother recalled.
Worked at court and moved to Germany
Aigul Sailybaeva is 40 years old. She was born in Kazakhstan in a family of lawyers, studied at the Kazakhstan University of Humanitarian Law and during her student years received a scholarship as part of the Bolashak presidential program. After that, she worked for some time at the Ministry of Justice of Kazakhstan, and then got a job as a judge in one of the courts in Astana.
In 2019, Aigul married Alexander Dontsov, who is much younger than her. The man is currently 29 years old. He is also a trained lawyer, a RANEPA graduate.
Alexander comes from an influential family: his grandmother has long headed the branch of CenterCredit Bank in Taldykorgan (Kazakhstan), and his mother Natalya works at security forces and promoted to the rank of lieutenant justice.
The couple lived for some time in two countries (Russia and America), because Alexander worked for the American mortgage corporation D Mortgage. And in 2021, the couple moved to Germany, where Alexander studied for a doctorate at the University of Leipzig. The couple later had a daughter.
Alexander Natalya's mother went to Germany with her family. The woman began to live with them.
Why are the husband and mother-in-law the main suspects?
German investigators have opened a criminal investigation into Aigul's death. The main suspects are the victim's mother-in-law and husband.
Theo Bildon the day Aigul went missing, Natalya Dontsova also disappeared. On June 4, she took her granddaughter to kindergarten, talked on the phone with the murdered woman's brother and left Germany at night. REN TV writes that Alexander called a taxi for her to the airport. CCTV cameras recorded the woman sitting with her arm bandaged while waiting for her flight. Later, Aigul's husband also left somewhere.
Immediately after Aigul's body was discovered, police searched the house where the victim lived with her husband and mother-in-law. The apartment was cleaned and the floors were washed. However, using ultraviolet light, investigators found blood stains in Aigul and Natalya's living room and bathroom. Red stains were also found in the basement of the house and in Natalya's car.
“We believe that Aigul and Natalya were fighting in the house, then someone hit Aigul on the head from behind. When Dontsova and Aigul fought, Dontsova had a knife in her hand and all of Aigul's hands were injured. After that, she (Aigul – approximately “VM”) was washed and changed into clean clothes. The clothes she was wearing were not stained with blood,” said lawyer Ruzia Nurmasheva of the Saylybaev family. note.
After Aigul's death, her friends told investigators that the woman often complained about mental pressure from her mother-in-law and husband. Her husband periodically raised his hand against Aigul, forbade her to go out and call relatives, and they also took her money and personal belongings. Natalya considers her daughter-in-law an “unlucky mother”. Aigul is afraid that if she leaves, her husband's family will take away her daughter.
Soon, a criminal case about Aigul's murder was opened in Kazakhstan, and her husband and mother-in-law were placed on the international wanted list.
How it came to Russia
Investigators believe Aigul's mother-in-law and husband may have fled to Russia. According to “Komsomolskaya Pravda“, Natalya Dontsova left behind her husband and son in the Russian Federation, as well as three apartments in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk. The woman was not found in any of these cities. The whereabouts of her husband and son are also unknown.
January 31, 2026 Telegram channel 112 reported that Aigul's husband and mother-in-law were hiding in Moscow. Alexander reportedly granted Russian citizenship to his three-year-old daughter and got a job as a research assistant at the Department of World Economics and International Politics at the Higher School of Economics at the National Research University. You can find it on the university's website pagereserved for one man. What his mother did is unknown.
Meanwhile, Aigul's mother recorded a video message to the Chairman of the Investigative Committee (IC) of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, asking for help in finding the suspects. On February 1, the head of the Investigation Committee responded to this request and ordered to check information showing that those believed to be Aigul's murderers were hiding in Moscow.
— The Moscow City Investigative Committee of the Russian Investigative Committee organized a procedural inspection. Chairman of the Russian Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin directed the head of the Main Investigative Committee of the Russian Investigative Committee in the city of Moscow, Dmitry Belyaev, to report on the progress of inspection procedures, the Investigative Committee reported.
Another brutal massacre occurred in Dagestan. At the end of January, a local resident killed, dismembered and burned My beloved Malvina Magomedova. The girl was considered missing and was searched for five days. She is survived by three young children. Shortly before the massacre, this man sold Malvina's car without consulting and lent most of the money to an acquaintance. Early doubts detained and held in a pre-trial detention center.
